Hanan Townshend Scoring Terrence Malick’s ‘To The Wonder’

Hanan Townshend Scoring Terrence Malick's 'To The Wonder'

Bits and pieces. That’s how information regarding Terrence Malick‘s films generally tend to arrive, and it’s not different for his upcoming “To The Wonder.” What we know so far is that it stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel Weisz and Barry Pepper and will center on a man who goes to Europe, falls in love, comes back home to get married, only to rekindle a romance with a childhood sweetheart. Of course, that is likely just a starting point for whatever Malick chooses to explore, in his first film to run under 2 hours since “Days Of Heaven,” that will be rated R and supposedly even more experimental than “The Tree Of Life.” And now another puzzle piece has emerged.

Malick has enlisted Hanan Townshend to score the upcoming movie, bringing in a relatively fresh face after working with folks like Alexandre Desplat, James Horner and Hans Zimmer on his last few films. However, Townshend was already very familiar with how Malick works. One of his pieces, “Eternal Pulse,” was featured in the soundtrack to “The Tree Of Life,” and he performed on a number of tunes as well, and clearly the director liked what he heard to bring him back. Of course, who knows what other pieces of music Malick might bring into the fray, but this is a big step up for Townshend who has largely worked on smaller, lesser known indie flicks until now.

Anyhow, check out his composer reel below — is it just us, or is that opening school sequence from “The Tree Of Life” a sorta deleted/extended scene? — along with a playlist of his various works. “To The Wonder” screens at Venice and TIFF in the coming weeks.